Sunday, November 11, 2007

It's been a busy day

It started with the cute octopus toy that's been sitting on my desk at work. I've been thinking about him for a while now. But I'm always a bit nervous about getting the suckers and tentacles right!

Anyway, I bit the bullet and started sketching up a girl holding her little octopus pet in her hand (I'll have to name the two of them soon - I think she may be Elspeth).

I'm taking more time with my painting now - planning it out and not 'winging' it when I get to the canvas. That works fine for pencil drawings - I can always throw out a sheet of paper or cardboard if it doesn't work. But I'm a little sick of having a stack of 'didn't quite work' canvases haunting my studio!

So now I'm getting it right on paper, and tracing it onto the canvas before I start painting.

This one's about halfway there. The blue masking tapes makes it a little hard to judge the colours but I can't wait to see how the masking in the bottom right hand corner works.

OK, a bit more depth to the tones now. Her hair's coming along nicely. I'm still debating the pattern for the octopus. That's enough for tonight - I think I'll sleep on it.

I took the masking tape off last night and I'm really happy with the 'torn-paper' effect it's created. In fact, I was trying to mimic a cardboardy look in the background, so this is perfect!

And I think it may be called "Elspeth and Yorrick" as the way she's holding the octopus reminds me of Hamlet's skull scene: "Alas poor Yorrick, I knew him, Horatio".